Orbx remarks about X-Plane

[SpiritFlyer 987]

So it's best to ignore stuff like this and at trust that the sim you enjoy is right for you. X plane does have its issues, but it also has its strengths. So the opinion of a man with a vested interest means nothing.

 

Very well said Jess. Consider the source...

[gojozoom 21]

I also agree with Jess, but guys, let's see the impact of that "patent-troll" lawsuit first...

[alainneedle1 97]

I also agree with Jess, but guys, let's see the impact of that "patent-troll" lawsuit first...

 

Not exactly the same but....

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crushed-the-shopping-cart-patent-and-saved-online-retail/

[alpilotx 505]

Am I correct in my understanding that land-class based scenery as we know it isn't possible in X-Plane?. I remember reading a lengthy interview with one of the developers who explained how the scenery system works, and it was quite different from flight simulators.

 

The FranceVFR team also seem to be trying to get their autogen over to X-Plane, but seem to have hit a snag. I'm not sure what it is, but it seems have gone quiet now on that front.

 

I'd love to see proper textures and region-based autogen in X-Plane, but so far everything looks so generic. I do have the Malmi airport which looks really good, but once you leave the airport, it's just plain X-Plane world again :(

 

You mean my interview - I assume B) :

http://xsimreviews.com/2011/12/10/developer-interview-andras-fabian-mr-x-terrain/

 

Then you didn't understand all of it. I didn't state anywhere, that there is no landclass data possible. To the contrary, I have even listed what landclass sources we used for the Global Scenery (and quite high res ones for EU and USA ... and the rest of the world still quite "good"). And not just that, but also lots of climate data to have climatic regions ... etc. The "only" point is - which explains your notion of the thing - that the scenery works really differently. Its much more pre compiled, and the sim does far less GIS style interpretation (like MSFS does). So the hard part is to prepare the scenery (while merging in all types of data sources like elevation, landclass, climate etc.) .... for which Laminar uses a quite complex piece of software (which is open source by the way, just not documented, as it was never intended for wide use by the public : http://dev.x-plane.com/cgit/cgit.cgi/xptools.git/ ).

 

And also, regionalization is possible beyond the pre-backed-in climate regions too ... it is already used in some selected regions for the default textures (look under Resources/default scenery/1000 world terrain/ ... and see those terrain10_XXX folders with the different postfixes ... and its documented here: http://scenery.x-plane.com/tutorials.php?doc=library.php under "regionalization").

 

So the point is, that from the engine side, and the DSFs you can do a lot, and a lot is already done with the Global Scenery, but until this day, the texture set is not even finalized, and is extended / improved with almost every update (even if most people don't notice, as many small changes over a long time are less obvious to humans, than a few big ones). All the artwork has to be done by someone, which often needs much more man-power than coding the rendering engine itself ...

 

... which brings us to ORBX, and why they have such a big team. Because - as I told - creating artwork is not "cheap", and very labor intensive!

 

And my two cents on ORBX ... as already a few pointed out above: ORBX is not the only entity on this planet who are capable of doing scenery like they do B) ... there are already a few of us showing what is possible in X-Plane too, and more will come ...

[StarTux 2]

Reading the quote and then the conclusion I think you get the true answer, "X-Plane has no future. It’s not a good sim, nor does it have a large enough customer base to make it worth our while." combined with " Orbx will be there for that since we are very close to the Lockheed Martin development team." That's the answer, they are both completely aligned and they cannot support another product at this time. All he is doing is spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) for business purposes, lets not forget its not only the consumer market where they're competing, but also in flight schools.

 

We need both, or as many as the genre can handle successfully and I honestly don't understand the partisan attitude amongst some consumers over which one is better, monopolies are bad for everyone even though this is pretty much what most companies aim to achieve.

 

Personally I have room for both on my hard drive . Just got X-Plane 10 and I like it a lot, just need to stabilise it as it has been causing a BSOD on my Windows 7 machine with HDR selected.

[Guest]

It's a rather childish statement and serves no potential benefit for him or ORBX.

 

Why would ANYONE want to condemn what can be another potential market for them and generate more revenue for them? Moving FSX scenery over to Xplane 10 scenery is fairly easy to do so it baffles me why John Venema would even think that, let alone make such a statement?

 

So this has no future?

 

[jjjallen 37]

It should be a no-brainer to convert scenery from FSX/P3D to XP IMO. Asking from a business standpoint why wouldn't you?

 

Cheers

jja

[tttocs 301]

It should be a no-brainer to convert scenery from FSX/P3D to XP IMO. Asking from a business standpoint why wouldn't you?

 

Honestly and from a business perspective? Off the top of my head and just to name a few: increased development and testing costs, support costs and support complexity. This would be especially true for a company moving from Windows only FSX to XP on multiple OS platforms. Supporting (and I mean truly SUPPORTING) a platform from a business perspective is a very different thing from a community or individuals porting and getting stuff "to work".

 

Honestly guys, the comments from Mr. Venema were predictable and in line with previous statements. He was asked a question in an interview and answered it in exactly the way he and Orbx have in the past. They're backing FSX for now, have bet on P3D for the future and have no plans to do anything with XP. Nothing new here AT ALL.

 

If there's a market and money to be made in XP scenery development (and I honestly hope there is), and if the platform is stable enough other companies and developers will step in and prove them wrong. If not, not.

 

Scott

[alainneedle1 97]

Honestly and from a business perspective? Off the top of my head and just to name a few: increased development and testing costs, support costs and support complexity. This would be especially true for a company moving from Windows only FSX to XP on multiple OS platforms. Supporting (and I mean truly SUPPORTING) a platform from a business perspective is a very different thing from a community or individuals porting and getting stuff "to work".

 

Honestly guys, the comments from Mr. Venema were predictable and in line with previous statements. He was asked a question in an interview and answered it in exactly the way he and Orbx have in the past. They're backing FSX for now, have bet on P3D for the future and have no plans to do anything with XP. Nothing new here AT ALL.

 

If there's a market and money to be made in XP scenery development (and I honestly hope there is), and if the platform is stable enough other companies and developers will step in and prove them wrong. If not, not.

 

Scott

 

Praising FSX-P3D is one thing but it's another thing when bashing a competitor.

 

Quote from JV..."X-Plane has no future. It’s not a good sim, nor does it have a large enough customer base to make it worth our while. It performs really poorly on hardware with settings maxxed out, " end of quote.

 

Any truth to that??? Why not asking Aerosoft, are they that crazy over there?

 

They started cuddling LM because they were kick out of Flight, they needed another exit, don't think for one sec. they did not try to take over Flight's addons market.

 

I stoped buying from them for good reasons, this is one more reason to reinforce my doing, Orbx make good sceneries but they are not alone, a lot of good developers are making and will make better sceneries for XP-10.

[Guest]

Honestly guys, the comments from Mr. Venema were predictable and in line with previous statements. He was asked a question in an interview and answered it in exactly the way he and Orbx have in the past. They're backing FSX for now, have bet on P3D for the future and have no plans to do anything with XP. Nothing new here AT ALL.

 

Scott, I still don't understand why he would make those comments? Fine, John isn't backing XP, ok, fair enough ... the correct business response is "we're not doing XP development at the moment" -- that's just good business sense.

 

I think perhaps he's worried about losing customers to Xplane or more specifically to those 3rd party scenery developers that are supporting Xplane.

 

On the support side, I can sorta see that angle ... but I gotta feel supporting an Xplane product is A LOT less work than supporting an FSX product given the number "blurries" and "OOMs" threads on FSX, etc. etc. Even on iOS/Android/OSX, we're just talking about texture files which is just all data ... they don't have to code anything.

 

And his statement that there isn't a large enough customer base is just simply wrong, 600,000 copies solid back in 2011, that's not too far from FSX 1,000,000+ sales. With recent release of XP10 I can't imagine that sales numbers are going down? If big names like PMDG do actually make an aircraft for XP10 64bit, it'll probably be the big break LR need to boost sales on the PC side. I think A LOT of FSX customers would take a serious look at XP10 with a PMDG product and free themselves of frame rate issues and a enjoy a hyper realistic aircraft with OOMs and other issues that plague FSX (which I'm sure isn't easy for PMDG to support).

 

There is an unusual amount of "hostility" towards Xplane that I must admit I have a hard time understanding. And my earlier suggestion that a 3rd party or competitor may have tipped of the Uniloc lawyers to file a lawsuit against LR might actually be more than just wild speculation.

 

There is plenty of room in the Flight sim market for FSX/P3D, XP10, others ... build a worthy product and we simmers shall come and buy it.

 

Those statements by John certainly don't sit well with me and it's unlikely I'll be one of their customers because of it.

[Geofa 108]

Having been around since the beginning of time I haven't seen an unusual amount of hostility towards xplane-in fact the hostility pales in compare to when fsx first came out by negative logarithmic proportions.

 

However, I agree fully the correct response should have been "we're not doing XP development at the moment" -- that's just good business sense...and from above-I am also perplexed that the USA cities series by Aerosoft have not been done for Xplane-I would buy every one of them and Aerosoft is a supporter of Xplane. There has to be more to this story..

[jjjallen 37]

What's to support with scenery? It either works or it doesn't

 

Good business sense will win out. Let the games begin.

 

Cheers

jja

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Having been around since the beginning of time

 

You followed me by 20 minutes. Don't forget that youngster. :Hug:

[Guest]

Ha, youngsters!? In what sense ... I've been coding since age 16, my first published game/sim was back in 1985 ... Air Traffic Controller (and I've got the magazine articles to prove it).

 

Perhaps hostility was too harsh a word ... maybe lack on enthusiasm?

 

Anyway, another example of a "dead" future? Can FSX do this?

 

[JonRD463 146]

Not to toot my own thread, but as long as I have this, I won't require Orbx's services for X-Plane anyway. B)

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/398495-plausible-reality-osm-hotspots/